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Sunday, July 22, 2012

Lessons from the Front!

So,

Robert from Drunken Samurai Painting Blog and I have been playing a lot of games of Flames of War 3rd edition. A few months back Rob talked me into playing some Infantry Aces sort of games (500, 700 & 900 points) and I have to say this is a great way to learn the rules. You can see Robs thoughts to the game here and I thought I would follow up his article with my own thoughts.

Objectives - Objective placement is huge! In more than one game I have blown my placement of objectives. It seems that there is an art to where you place them and I have been struggling with this and it has cost me the game more than once. You see, where you place the objective and either hinder or help you. What I find I have been doing is placing them where they would look cool on the table. While this looks good on the table, it does nothing to help me win games.

What I am finding is that you need to look at the mission and to think of what you and your opponent are going to do. If your playing a mission that means you only have to capture one objective, than place it closer to your deployment edge rather than your opponents. So in a nutshell, you need to think about where you place your objectives!

Army Special Rules - Read and learn your army special rules! For this series of games I started building and American Infantry army and unlike the DAK, there are a few rules that Americans benefit from. The first couple of games I never took advantage of the Truscott Trot (which allows US Infantry to move at the double 16"). In a few games I forgot to move troops and in this last game, I could have moved my Infantry up to 32" without being shot at. Learn your rules!

Today I also decided to take a few 105mm Guns, I just briefly looked at the artillery rules and thought I had them figured out. Turns out that I was wrong, I also forgot that the Americans have special rules for Artillery. So once again, read your special rules for your army!

Aircraft - Aircraft in 3rd edition is deadly and anti-aircraft capability is a must! Rob brought a Stuka to the battle today (I knew he would) and with Priority Air Support to boot. My only defense was AA MG guns on my Stuarts that I took. The only downside to AA MG on tanks is that they only get a rate of fire of 1, not too good. It is interesting that in this edition, Aircraft do not need to range in anymore, so unless you have decent AA or air power yourself, you are going to take it in the shorts like I did all day. So what is the take away, well you need to make sure you either take AA or aircraft your self.

So there you go, a few lessons from the front from your truly, hope this helps if your are getting into Flames of War. Once again, playing small point games is a great to learn the game are are a ton of fun!

Scott, Yes Staying on target (even if I switched off my targeting computer) is a must. Luckily this has never been a problem for me.

Now one thing that I have done is forgetting to follow the game turn sequence. As Rob pointed out, I sometimes forget to move, I just jump right to Shooting and I miss out on moving. So staying focused is key.